Whether you are disabling Spotlight or just wanting to reduce menubar icon clutter, it’s possible to hide the Spotlight icon. Here’s the best part though; if you just want to hide the Spotlight menu, you can do so without disabling the search abilities from functioning in the Finder or with other apps that rely on the Spotlight metadata, meaning the icon will disappear but you’ll still have the awesome search functions available elsewhere. We’ll show you how to hide the Spotlight menu bar icon from appearing in Mac OS X from versions 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, and beyond. It only takes a minute or so, and though it uses Terminal and the command line, it’s not tricky of complicated as long as you follow the instructions.

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“All My Files” is the all-inclusive folder in Mac OS X that includes, well, all of your files. It’s basically a smart folder that lists every user owned or created file, and by default it’s sorted by the files kind: Images, PDF’s, Documents, Music, Movies, Developer, and so on.

You’re not limited to sorting by filetype kind though, and by using the All My Files pulldown menu, you can choose to sort by name, last date opened, date added, date modified, date created, application the files were created in, size, and by label, or to have no sorting at all.
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Apple has aired several iPhone 4S commercials, a few focus on Siri, while others center on iCloud or the new camera.

Each iPhone 4s ad shares the same background music, but you might be wondering, what’s the catchy tunes name?
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We’ve inadvertently skipped a few weeks posting Mac setups, but we’re back again with another reader submitted desk. Stefan sent in this shot of his wonderfully simple Mac setup, the gear includes the aluminum MacBook unibody model (released before Apple turned it into the MacBook Pro 13″), as well as the following:

• iPhone 3Gs
• Magic Mouse
• Bamboo Wacom
• G-Drive mini

For those interested, the wallpaper can be downloaded here from Stefans site.

Send in your own Apple and Mac desk setups to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Looking for a couple new iOS games to play this weekend? EAGames is offering up two popular iPad games for free today, Flight Control HD and Mirrors Edge. The games couldn’t be more different, Flight Control is an air traffic control simulator and Mirrors Edge is an action side scroller, but they’re both a ton of fun and well worth downloading.

Flight Control for iPhone and iPod touch is also available for free as a separate download, so we’ll include that too. The games usualy sell for $4.99 and $9.99 so download them today while you can get them for free:

• Flight Control HD – (iPad only) – App Store
• Flight Control – (iPhone & iPod touch) – App Store
• Mirrors Edge – (iPad only) – App Store

Videos of gameplay below:
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Completely disabling and reenabling Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Mavericks can be done with the help of the Terminal. The following command unloads the Spotlight mds agent from launchd, thereby preventing the daemon from running or indexing any drives entirely.

Open up the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following commands based on the need to either disable or reenable Spotlight indexing. This will effect indexing on all drives connected to the Mac.
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Apple has started to air a new iTunes TV ad featuring The Beatles. The commercial is called “Covers” and transitions through The Beatles catalog that is available on iTunes, with the classic Beatles song “Magical Mystery Tour” playing in the background of the commercial.

This feels very much like an Apple ad, although it’s obviously targeting a slightly different demographic than the new “Share the Fun” iPod touch commercial does.

The ads release coincides with the iBookstore version of The Beatles Yellow Submarine, a free illustrated book from the iBookstore.

Looking to get an iPad 2 for the holidays? By far the cheapest place to buy one right now is directly through Apple’s very own online refurb store, where prices are discounted up to $100.

If you’re thinking that refurbished gear is sketchy, think again, because Apple’s refurbished iPads all come with the exact same 1-year warranty of a brand new iPad, plus all refurbs include a brand new battery and outer shell, guaranteeing the device will look and feel brand new. At these discounts and with the same Apple warranty, these prices are hard to beat.

Models are available in both black and white:

• iPad 2 16GB Wi-Fi: $419
• iPad 2 32GB Wi-Fi: $499
• iPad 2 64GB Wi-Fi: $599
• iPad 2 16GB 3G: $549
• iPad 2 32GB 3G: $629
• iPad 2 64GB 3G: $729

Check them out on store.apple.com

Availability of the 3G models is dependent on the carrier you want, with the 64GB AT&T models currently being sold out. These will probably sell out quick, so move fast if you want to get one.

An untethered iOS 5 jailbreak looks to be released soon, as indicated by a video released by the Chronic Dev Team showing off an iPod touch running such a jailbreak. Posted to Twitter by developer @pod2g, the video shown below clearly demonstrates an iOS 5 device rebooting and working normally while maintaining the jailbroken state, proving the untethered status.

The upcoming release is said to work on both iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1, and while the video shows an iPod touch, it is unclear if the untether will work on iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Presumably those devices will be tested at a later time when the jailbreak has been refined. No release date has been set, but typically these teaser videos show up not long before public availability of a new jailbreak.

Current jailbreaks for iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1 are tethered, meaning they must be connected to a computer and booted with the assistance of a helper application. This is more of a nuisance than anything else, because if a device runs out of battery on the road you must be around a computer to have it working again.

Although you can set scrollbars to always display in windows, there is no option to show the actual scrollbar arrows anymore in Mac OS X. A simple workaround to get used to this is to start using the keyboards up and down arrow keys instead:
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MacUpdate is back with another Mac OS X application bundle, this one includes 12 great apps that would retail alone for $741, but sold as a bundle are discounted 94% to just $49.99. The app pack includes:

• TechTool Pro($99) – Powerful system repair, testing, & maintenance tool
• IconBox ($24) – Organize and customize icons across your Mac
• TotalFinder ($18) – Adds tabs, hotkeys, and other tweaks to the Finder
• Postbox 3 ($29) – Powerful and flexible email client
• FontPack Pro Master ($300) – 6,200+ royalty free, commercial use fonts plus font management utility
• Labels & Addresses ($49) – Powerful label & envelope printing tool
• Mac DVDRipper Pro 3 ($19) – Copy DVD video to your Mac
• Back in Focus ($99) – Refocus blurry images
• NeverWinter Nights 2 ($19) – Role-playing game with infinite possibilities
• Hear ($19) – Improves audio quality and adds audio options system-wide
• iClip 5 ($19) – Get past the limitations of a single clipboard
• FoldersSynchronizer ($40) – Synchronize or backup files, folders and disks

Get the MacUpdate Winter Bundle now for $49.99

All apps come as downloads, and MacUpdate stores the serial and registration details online so they’re easy to recover should you need them again later.

(If you’re wondering why the graphic says 11 apps rather than 12, that’s because IconBox is included only for the first 15,000 buyers, but that shouldn’t be an issue if you get the pack in the near future.)

The user caches folder sits in ~/Library/ and contains cache files from nearly all applications that are actively used in Mac OS X. While most apps maintain their caches reasonably well and don’t let things get out of control, some aren’t so good at it, and some apps leave behind rather large folders that serve no purpose if you no longer use the application.

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Apple has posted their annual iTunes and App Store rewind lists for 2011, naming the best music, movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, iOS apps, and Mac apps for the year. We’ll cover the best apps for iPad, iPhone, and Mac, and you can check out the rest of the winners on the iTunes or Mac App Stores:

iTunes & iOS Apps of the Year 2011

• iPhone App of the Year – Instagram
• iPhone Game of the Year – Tiny Tower
• iPad App of the Year – Snapseed
• iPad Game of the Year – Dead Space

The App Store 2011 Rewind for iTunes can be found here and also includes the top music, movies, TV shows, books, and podcasts for 2011, in addition to showing the runners up.

Mac Apps of the Year 2011

• Mac App of the Year – Pixelmator
• Mac Game of the Year – Civilization V

The runners-up for the Mac App Store are djay and Anomaly Warzone, and the full list for the Mac can be seen here.

Don’t like your desk setup? Wishing you had a better Mac, or maybe a more stylish desk to work at? Do you ever long for a more ergonomic workstation that aids in a productivity surge? Well folks, remember this picture, because your desk situation could be worse – a lot worse – you could be sharing one single desk in the most awkwardly possible way like this ridiculous double-decker Mac setup.
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It’s extremely easy to selectively delete any single phone call from the iPhones call log, all you need to do is remember to use the simple swipe gesture described below:
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I’ve gotten in the habit of immediately putting my MacBook Air to sleep by shutting the lid, by far the easiest method if you’re on the go. Typically this works without a hitch, but today the Air didn’t sleep when shut. Because the MacBook Air has no moving hard drive or sleep light, I didn’t notice this until I went to use it again about two hours later when I found the machine to be unusually hot to the touch because it never slept as intended. From there on it became a repeatable occurrence, and while I’m not sure of the cause, the solution was just a matter of resetting the SMC:

• Shut down the MacBook Air
• Connect the MagSafe adapter
• Hold down Shift+Control+Option+Power at the same time
• Release all keys at the same time, then hit the power button again to turn the MacBook Air on

The key sequences for an SMC reset are highlighted below, this is specific to the MacBook Air but would also work on the newer MacBook Pro models:

You’ll know the SMC has reset because the MagSafe light flicks on and off, and once you boot up, your MacBook Air should sleep normally again.

Ironically, I had the opposite problem earlier in the year where the MacBook Air wouldn’t wake from sleep.

If you shuffle between the Terminal and the Mac OS X desktop often, you’ll get good use out of a Services feature which gives the ability to create a new Terminal window (or tab) from a selected folder within the Finder. You have to enable the Service inside System Prefs beforehand though:
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We recently showed you how to manually change the login screen wallpaper, but if you don’t want to deal with resizing images and digging around in the filesystem, you can use a free app called Loginox.

Loginox sets new background wallpaper at the click of a button, resizing the images for you to the native screen resolution. The tool can also customize the login screens logo from the default Apple to anything else, although smaller transparent PNG’s look best. If at any point you decide you don’t like your changes, just clicking the “Reset to default image” button in either tab will restore the default background linen and Apple logo.

• Download Loginox free from the developer

It’s a no frills app, but gets the job done easily, and it’s free. We’re focusing on OS X 10.7 Lion, but Loginox works with Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 too, so if you haven’t upgraded yet you can still use the app to customize your login screen.
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